Martin Oppel’s work combines skillfully executed photorealistic oil painting with a complexity of content more commonly associated with conceptual art practices. Oppel also creates sculptures, often harnessing the tensions created by unexpected combinations of object and material. He is known for tackling a wide variety of subjects, from Russian Constructivism to ancient Mesoamerican mythology. Mount consists of one canvas that depicts a mountain peak and another that reveals the same peak to be the top of a mound of dirt on a construction site. The top painting is dominated by a cloudless sky glowing with early-morning light; it makes subtle reference to the lofty tradition of 19th-century American landscape painting. With the image below, Oppel contrasts this sublime vista against a dismal city scene, suggesting that nature––though upheld as a relief from urban living and industrialization––has been compromised by the onward march of progress. The diptych is not only a statement about nature, however; it is also about the nature of representation and the ways in which visual material can be manipulated to alter the viewer’s understanding of reality. The diptych contains an additional reference: the instantly recognizable mountaintop of the logo for Paramount movie studios.